US scholar Haleh Esfandiari was allowed to leave Tehran early this morning, ending an eight-month saga of imprisonment and virtual house arrest that heightened tense relations between the United States and Iran.Esfandiari flew to Austria, where she was to be met by her husband, Shaul Bakhash, a George Mason University historian. “I’m elated that Haleh has been freed to come back home,” Bakhash said in a telephone interview from Vienna before she arrived.But the legal status of Esfandiari, who directs Middle East programs at the Smithsonian's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, remains unclear. “As far as I know, she was not told whether there are any conditions attached to her release,” said Bakhash.Iranian officials said in May that she was charged with “crimes against national security” and trying to foment a ”Velvet Revolution,” a reference to the nonviolent upheavals that ousted communism in Eastern Europe.Esfandiari was visiting her ailing 93-year-old mother when she was detained in December. She went through weeks of intense interrogations conducted by Intelligence Ministry officials.
